Google’s Project Ara modular phone might be dead in the water

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Have you been waiting patiently to upgrade your phone in the hopes that a Project Ara phone would pop up on Google Store? Yeah, about that… You might never see one.

According to a new report from Reuters, Google may be done with Project Ara. That comes after two years of talks, demos, and rumored launch dates. Google even announced plans to do a trial run with Project Ara in Puerto Rico in January of last year only to scrap those plans in August.

It’s important to note the language Reuters used in their article. They chose to say that Project Ara has been suspended, and not specifically that it has been completely shuttered. Google may simply be focusing its efforts elsewhere for the time being.

Even if you dream of owning a Project Ara phone are toast, there’s a very good chance that you’ll be able to buy a modular phone of some sort. LG already introduced their first modular phone (the G5), and Motorola/Lenovo followed suit with the launch of the Moto Z Play. There’s also the Fairphone 2 and PuzzlePhone.

No, none of those phones offers the kind of modularity Google was pitching with Project Ara, but they’re all moving in the same direction. Hopefully today’s report can be taken literally and Google has simply pressed the pause button for now and they’ll hit play again soon. And when they do, let’s hope they’ve figured out how to keep the #failedthedroptest hashtag from coming back to haunt them.